Automation: A new approach to data centre management

Webcast On 11 March at 11am, we have some special guests to talk us through the finer points of managing a data centre efficiently. Tim Phillips from The Register is the host for the day and he's joined by Tony Lock from Freeform Dynamics, Greg Charman from Microsoft and Graham Rushton from Avanade.

For some people, managing the services that the data centre delivers is very much a manual job. But with the creeping demands of the business a steady march towards automation taking place. We’re not talking about full-scale automation here, but about finding the middle ground where you can start organising your systems to deliver more efficiently, handle some of the management burden and start moving away from systems in silos and towards processes that are singing in tune with the business. We're calling it data centre orchestration. Catchy, we know.

The panel will be looking at identifying where automation might make sense; systems management; how to deliver automation effectively; and how to build your service catalogue to keep it all organised. They'll help you understand where you are in the journey towards automation and give you lots of real world advice to help you en route. They'll even touch on practices such as ITIL and COBIT and where these might help.